


Like A Clock

by rin0rourke



Category: Danny Phantom
Genre: Alternate Timelines, Enemies to Friends to Lovers, M/M, Sexual Content, Time Travel
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2015-11-04
Updated: 2015-11-06
Packaged: 2018-04-30 00:30:37
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence, Major Character Death
Chapters: 2
Words: 1,767
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/5143670
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/rin0rourke/pseuds/rin0rourke
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Danny has spent the last two years, an eternity to a teenager, speculating on Dash's sudden and unnerving attitude change towards him. And while he absolutely doesn't miss the bullying, he does miss the jock.</p><p>With days before he leaves for college Dash calls him out for what he thinks, and hopes is a confession. What he gets instead is a visit from ClockWork, a supposedly future moodier version of himself, and a dire warning.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Clock Strikes 1

There's a neat little clock  
In the schoolroom it stands  
And it points to the time  
With its two little hands.

“I was wondering when you’d do something.”

Dash backpedaled, face snapping away from the lips that had whispered the words so huskily. “What?” He asked.

“Well,” Danny drawled, “you’ve been fawning over me for years, honestly I didn’t know you had that kind of self control.” The laugh was mean and mocking. Hands that had tucked themselves into the jock's back pockets pinched through the fabric.

“What are you talking about?” Danny's smile was slow and sly and Dash felt his skin go clammy. “You mean you…you knew? ”

“From the very beginning,” he almost sang it, so proud of that, “I mean, its kind of obvious when my school bully suddenly stops picking on me.” Those hands tugged, pulling their hips close together, button against button.

“You,” Dash swallowed audibly, “you never said anything.” Biting his lip he tried to get his mind to focus, to think, with the lean warm inviting body pressed against him, his hands exploring the length of the Danny's back.

“Why would I?” Danny huffed, “I wasn’t interested, and you never approached me.” He looked up into Dash’s face with an emotion Dash couldn’t quite place, lips trembling at the edges as he struggled to keep his smile. “What was I supposed to do, call you out just to reject you?” And the sad pitying way it was said made Dash’s mouth curve up.

“But what about now?” his hands slipped up around shoulders just a few inches shorter than his own, cupped him there. “What about this?”

A warm welcoming smile, hands left his back pockets to wrap around his thick neck and tug at the short hairs. Pulling down until their forheads touched, Dash's own hands slid back down that long curve of spine to rest open palm and warm at the waist, visual contact broke when eyelids slid down. Mouths so close, tasting each other’s breath, lips skimmed like a mosquito over water. Then Danny released him, stepping away faster than Dash had managed just a moment before.

“Yeah, I’d still say I have to reject you.”

Surprise, no shock, bone deep shock struck through him, melted into pain so deep and intense. “Wha-” He swallowed past the emotion clogging his throat, sharp, like needles in his chest, like swallowing something a little too big, a little too rough, a little difficult to breath around. “What’s this all about.”

“Amusement,” he said simply, “how often does a looser get to hurt his bully back? I couldn’t resist, I mean, you’re just so completely gone over me it’s hilarious.”

He fought past the rising heat in his face, the burning behind his eyes. Danny just kept that teasing smirk. “Hilarious? You think,” he managed through clenched teeth and fisted hands, “that spending these years agonizing over you is hilarious?”

“No,” he admitted with a shrug but that smile came back in an instant, “I think the fact that it's **you**  agonizing over **me**  is hilarious.” He tucked his thumbs into his front pockets and studied Dash through laughing eyes. “Did you really think, after everything you did, I’d even try and return your feelings? Come on, what a joke.” He laughed then, deep and cruel and taunting. “Find someone else to get yourself off Dash, I’m not interested.”

“I’ll kill you.” He hissed too low for the other to hear. Thick, ferocious fury like he had never known clawed at him from somewhere deep inside, Dash growled low in his throat, making Danny’s smile slide just a little. “Why,” he began hoarsely, “Why the fuck would you lead me on like that? I’ll fucking kill you!” He launched forward, hands reaching out to strangle, but Danny did the unexpected and stepped right back up to him, gripping Dash's hands in his own and slipping between his arms to plant a soft kiss against his lips.

“Aw, cheer up moron,” he said at Dash’s dumfounded expression, “that’s two kisses you got out of this. That’s gotta be more than you expected.” Then he released those big, dangerous hands and walked away before the jock recovered from the surprise.

“ **FENTON**!”

Ducking around the corner he turned invisible and pressed himself against the wall just as Dash charged by like a raging bull, wanting to give chase no doubt. His trembling hand went up to tug at the fabric against his chest, felt the heavy hurried beat of his heart, his breathing an asthmatic weeze, finally able to let the situation wash through him. His heavy breathing hitched, interrupted by a dry painful sob. He shook from the agony, the sorrow, the uncontrollable want. And the knowing that he had held onto Dash for one moment, kissed him for that moment, and it would be the only time in all his life he ever would.

Covering his face he slid bonelessly down the wall to mourn the loss of his future.

Then Clockwork was beside him with his grim wrinkled look, a hand, heavy and warm and familiar, on his shoulder. “He’ll live now.” His youth reassured. “He’ll find someone else and he’ll live.”

“But he won’t love them like me,” Danny’s voice was thick with unreleased tears. "They could never love him like I did.”

“But he’ll live.” Said the infant.

And that had to be good enough for him. It **had**  to be.

He heard a swear and looked up from his hands to see his past self, late from fighting a ghost, transform mid flight and continue the journey at a run, skidding into the apartment’s graffiti colored wannabe park and looking around frantically.

“Dash?” He called. He was wearing an outfit Danny remembered well, he’d bought it one day while shopping with his sister, he imagined this day when he picked it out the outfit, when he would confirm his suspicions, his hopes, about Dash’s feelings. It looked good on him.

He, himself, wasn’t wearing that outfit , just a plain one, and seeing it on his past self delivered a hard bruising punch to his heart..

“Dash?” He called again, anxious, and walked around the beat up play set, as if the over muscled dope could possibly hide behind it somewhere. With a noisy huff he plopped down on the base of the slide. “Great, I’m late cuz freaking ghosts and now Dash thinks I stood him up.” He let his head fall back, slumped himself down on the worn plastic so that his arms dangled over the edges. "Probably wasn't even a date."

His future self let go of his invisibility and walked out onto the cushioned turf with ClockWork at his side.

There were things they needed to talk about, and knowing himself, he wasn’t and wouldn’t be prepared to listen.

And may we, like the clock  
Keep a face clean and bright  
With hands ever ready  
To do what is right.


	2. Clock Strikes 2

Time after time every clock's hands spun round again; minute, hour, second it didn't matter which sooner or later the same twelve numbers would repeat.

And living in a small town it was certain to follow that someone from your past was going to come back. 

It shouldn't have suprised him that one of those people was Dash, but it did. Thirteen years… somehow it didn't seem long enough. Fifty years probably wouldn't feel enough.

He wasn't a teenager anymore, he assured himself, and there was no such thing as soulmates, only the naivete, and hormones, of youth. Not anything worth getting a man killed over.

Certainly not the man you were told you'd one day love.

But relationships formed and scattered like stormclouds, and he had been carefull to avoid **that**  particular disaster. They were two very different people now, and the likelihood of them forming anything but a grudging buisness relationship was very very low.

He still didn't have to like it.

Danny brooded down into his beer, unwilling to aknowledge the chance Dash would hold some grudge against him. Dash had, after all, been his tormentor for much of his life. Surely as an adult he could forgive Danny a little payback? If not, well they definitely wouldn't be working together long, no matter what the risk demanded.

It wasn't like he could confide his months of guilt and grief to appease the man, Danny scowled, the entire ruse hindged on his not having any feelings for Dash at all. To confess to heartbreak would invite too many questions, if it was believed at all.

He watched the door from his table, scanning the people coming in and out. He did not want to be here, he did not want to face yet another sacrifice he had made for the 'greater good', but once again everyone's lives depended on him tossing his personal comfort into the ghost zone like last night's thermos contents. 

He just wish, so god damn much, that the universe would make up it's fucking mind. Did he stay clear of Dash or not? It wasn't that difficult a question.

Too late, far far too late, to change his mind, seeing as how the idiot of interest just walked in and, with a single vicious scan of the bar locked those hard angry eyes on him.

It was strange to see Dash again. Danny liked to think he hadn’t changed, a little taller, a little thicker, but overall the same big, beefy meathead jock he had always been. His hair was the gold of a newly minted coin swept back from an attractively squared face, great wide shoulders, narrow hips, and tanned to bronze.

He towered, like a forboding villain’s lair towered, over Danny, who simply popped another stale peanut in his mouth and pretended to be bored with the shitty college rock band on stage. He nursed resentnent as well as his beer, Dash was still taller than him. 

God fucking damn it. 

After several moments the former jock huffed out a nasally sigh and plopped his narrow ass in an uncomfortable chair. The table was small enough to have their knees knocking. Trying to get comfortable Danny opened his legs and let their thighs fit together. 

“What am I even doing here?” Dash asked.

“Want the job doncha?”

A muscle twitched in his cheek, those dark blue eyes threatening temper; “yes,” He managed through grit teeth.

“Well,” Danny gestured with a peanut, “Consider this your interview.”

“You are not doing this drunk.” Dash looked appalled.

“I’m not drunk,” yet, “but I’m not doing this sober.”


End file.
